Just another polar bear adrift in the sea

I know some pretty amazing women. All ages, all sorts of jobs, all sorts of sizes, shapes and body configurations. The one thing they all have in common is their ability to be amazing time and time again.

They’re not always perfect. Many of them are struggling with personal issues that would stop an average person in their tracks but they keep on chugging along. Many of them face uphill battles with devastating physical aliments. They are part of all sorts of relationships including enjoying one with just themselves. Kids, no kids, dog people, cat people, no pet people and so on..

There is no real point to this post except wanting to sing their praises. Ask yourself this… do you know me? Are you a woman? Then I am talking about you! Yes.. you. I think you’re fabulous.

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It is sometimes surprising the things you learn about yourself in the strangest places or oddest moments. Like your car or the shower or the parking lot of a Walmart. (they have a good price on Fage. Don’t judge) Last week with Mercury going out of retrograde it was my turn to be graced by the clue by four not once but twice. Some girls get all the luck.

First was the realization that I am simply not made for sitting still. Oh don’t get me wrong, I like a good couch surf as much as the next person but honestly, if I want to be active I have to stay active. Doing so makes me happy. This may seem like a no-brainer to you but we can’t all be graced with that kind of wisdom. For a long time now there has been this huge internal struggle where I beat myself up because I have no energy to do the things that need to be done when the cure all along was to simply keep moving and almost if by magic things get done. Who knew! Just as a rolling stone gathers no moss a rolling Sylvari gathers no …. things. Since going back to an outside of the house job things have gotten cleaned, food has been cooked in buckets, working out has happened on a somewhat regular basis (ish) gyms have been joined so weights can be lifted! However the biggest and best part is that being busy simply makes me happy. It’s not a perfect system but it’s a damn sight better than the one I was using.

The second was that sisterhood is far more important to me than I thought. Not those sisters forced on you by circumstances of birth but the ties that women share that men, as much as we love them, simply can’t understand. The most important of these is a feeling of safety. After hearing the story of a lovely lady in the Pagan community whose story of a person in a position of authority who took advantage of her I am filled with rage. We should be protecting one another. We should be able to go into circle, take a teaching, even just spend time with those in who we placed a sacred trust without the pressure or fear of unwanted attention or manipulation. Worse is when progress in your path is held back as a way to manipulate those women. I am angered on her behalf and on behalf of any woman who has fallen prey to unscrupulous so called religious leaders. My goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else if I can help it. From this moment forward I’m calling people out on their poor behavior. grr…

In other news , seeds and plants are ordered for the new gardens. Fifty six days till spring.

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He’s my half brother. Some of you may already know parts of this story. For those who do just read past the first part.

For most of my life I have been fatherless. Even my birth certificate lists no paternal name for..reasons. It honestly hasn’t bothered me since leaving grade school and the obligatory “make something that looks like a tie for Father’s Day” crafting projects. Over the years curiosity about my ancestors on the unknown side of my family was the one lingering question in the back of my mind. Asking my mom was not an option. On the few occasions I was brave enough to do so I was quickly shut down.

When she passed away it was time to do a little digging around. The first place I looked were the DNA ancestry sites. Knowing my mom’s family came from Poland meant anything that wasn’t clearly Eastern European would be from my father’s people. In theory. I tried DNA Tribes first. Interesting information but not quite enough. Then 23andMe came along with their family finder feature (weeee!!ffffffffffun) and I thought..ok, a distant cousin or two might be fun to know in a distant, non- stalker way, so I signed up. Now we were cooking with gas! There was some fun information about the amount of Neanderthal DNA I carried, (lots) where my earliest maternal ancestress came from (Siberia or Iran) and my British Isles heritage. Plus cousins! Not close mind you, but people with names. I learned a lot about mtDNA that year.

Then Ancestry.com had a sale on their DNA testing kit. So I gave it a go. Pinky and I had spent quite a bit of time there going down a rabbit hole of family tree research. Being able to combine the fun of tracing my known roots with the possibility of tracing my unknown roots was too good a combination to resist. So I took the plunge. Then something I did not expect happened. I had a relative. A close relative. First cousins or better close. Eep! Nervously I reached out.

And met a sweet man. We exchanged information, he put forth the theory that maybe his grandfather might be my unknown father but he would poke his dad and grandfather for more information.

Now understand, as a child I just assumed my mom didn’t include my father in my life because for whatever reason she simply didn’t want him to know about me. as I got older I assumed it was because he had another family, another life, that I could not for reasons, be a part of nor should I be. As my grandmother enjoyed reminding me I was just a bastard. A mistake of immense proportions. So I approached these newly found potential family members cautiously. After all as far as the 12 year old in me knew, they didn’t want me bringing my bastard spooge into their golden family circle. All I was looking for were names to add to the barren side of my family tree. What I got was something else entirely.

I got a brother. Once Ancestry and digging made it clear that the father of this newly minted first cousin or closer (now nephew) and I were related in that serious way. Nervously I waited to see what his first email would bring. His reply was “welcome to our dysfunctional family” . *sound of birds singing as the sun appears from the clouds in a Monty Python-esque cut scene*

Fast forward thru a bunch of emails and a few aborted attempts to work up the time and nerve to call and here we are today. Today my shiny new, wonderfully welcoming brother has informed me he will be in my neck of the woods next week (or the week after) and would like to meet me. EEp! again! Of course I want to meet him but there is still this voice in my head that says who wants a black sheep. Luckily for me I am well versed in ignoring that voice.

What an adventure this year has been already.

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Lately I’ve been trying to get back into the woods. In the last few weeks I’ve hit the trail more and more in an effort not only to be healthier but also because I honestly enjoy it. As the temps here in the Northeast cool down my yearning for the hills and dales of my home increases. Nothing is as soul satisfying as a walk in the woods with snow on the ground and frost nipping at your bits.

Today’s walk was a bit of an eye opener. After an unusually warm beginning to the season winter finally arrived this last week with a little snow and a temperatures that finally fell to somewhere approaching normal. (That would be 38F for you Imperial bastards and 3.5C for you Metric mavens just so you know.) So off i went, hat and gloves in hand to get me some of the cool, cool mountain air. Got to my spot, got out of my car and started walking. All by myself, a little ice on the access road, my mind started doing something it has never done before. It started worrying. Now don’t get me wrong, I worry with the best of them but never before about walking. It took me a while to realize what was going on. There was my brain, saying all these weird things about falling on the ice, being a woman alone in the woods, my phone running out of a charge and so on. When I poked a little more it dawned on me that the root of my fear was not so much the conditions as it was being alone. Independant. It had been a long time since I had done anything where I was truly alone. There were no other hikers in my little neck of the woods. The sounds of the road were quickly left behind. I was alone. And it scared me. I thought about turning back and taking the road more traveled. “Let’s play it safe” my mind whispered. I had been playing it safe for a while, After all a woman of my age had to think about these things more.

That stopped me dead in my tracks. A woman of my age? What the hell did that mean? Ever the contrary kid, the little voice in my mind told the voice whispering that I should be safe to go fuck itself and off I went. I am a woman of my age and I get to chose what that means. What it means it the road less taken so I can hear the inner me and sometimes tell her to go to hell.